Category: LiveJournal

A visit from the girls

In my life, there are two sets of people I call “the girls” and context is everything. When talking about Amy & Rachel, they’re “the girls.” Also when talking about judiang and elsaf, they’re “the girls.” In this particular case, I’m talking about the latter. (Though next week, the folks and I are going to be visiting the girls, and I’ll mean the former.)

Judi arrived Friday and I picked her up from the airport. We had lunch at Steak & Shake, popped into Meijer for a few supplies for the weekend, popped back at my house so I could talk to the guys working on the house, then finally made our way to the Lake (stopping at Wagner’s for ice and a few more supplies).

The folks were already there (I’m usually late to my own parties), so I spent some time chatting with them. Then Becky and Dean arrived and we chatted more. Then I fixed supper – grilled hot dogs & hamburgers. Mom brought macaroni salad and some dips for chips. Then Becky, Judi, mom and I played two games of pinochle, which Judi and I won. Woohoo!

By 11pm, though, Judi and I were alone again. We geeked out on the computers for a bit, then headed for bed.

We got up a bit late yesterday and eventually headed to Waffle House in Sidney for a late breakfast (aka, a brunch). A return to the Lake for more vegging, reading, and computing. Elsa didn’t arrive until 4 or so, and the folks arrived soon after. I didn’t get around to the grocery yet for more supplies (I’m not very efficient on the supply front) so I did that while everyone got stuff ready for supper. (See, I suck at this being hostess thing.)

When I’d returned, I grilled the ribs which Elsa had prepared ahead of time (and grilled them to her specifications) and we ate wonderful ribs w/ a bourbon barbecue sauce and fresh corn on the cob (supplied by mom from a local farmer’s market). Tasty tasty, and very filling. The folks headed out before dark and missed out on dessert (but assured me they were too full). I then stoked up the fire and the girls and I sat out & watched it burn down.

Once we returned indoors, we had dutch apple pie ala mode (courtesy of Wagner’s grocery). I finally watched ep 1 of Sherlock before going to sleep. Hopefully we’ll get to see ep 2 tonight.

For breakfast this morning, Elsa made us pancakes (blueberry pancakes) and sausage. Right now, Judi’s napping, Elsa’s knitting, and I’m typing this up. We may go see Inception later today. It’s very lovely here at the Lake this weekend.

The House (and Garage) of Five Gables

Today, they started installing the shingles on the gables. It’s pretty nifty cuz the HardieShingles aren’t individual shakes but several on a “backbone” of more Hardie material. Still, when you’re doing Gables, you’re gonna have lots of little bits anyhoo. (And they did.)

In other good house news, the new front window and the back sliding door arrived today. They both look nice, but I was sad to see the sliding door doesn’t have a way of locking/unlocking from the outside. (An oversight which I hope we can rectify.) You’ll probably also note in the photos that the trim is being painted. (Beige will not be the color of the house when done…)

So, here be photos!


Gable 1: The front of the house.


Gable 2: The north side of the house.


Gable 3: The south side of the house.


Gable 4: The front of the garage. Gable 5, the back of the garage, has not been completed yet.


New sliding door!


Linus looks out of his original front window – probably for the last night!


The new front window waits on the front porch.

So I think the goal for tomorrow is to get the window & door in (since Friday I’ll be picking judiang up from the airport for a weekend at the Lake). I imagine they’ll get Gable 5 in as well.

If you want to find me, look in the lab!

On Friday, the staff were given a tour of the new building, and I finally got to to see my lab with the permanent furniture in it. It’s just as I planned it (yay!) so I’m quite excited. Looks like we’ll get to start working in our rooms in early August. So once the folks and I return from our visit to see Amy & Rachel (yay – A&R!), I’ll be able to start unpacking.

My new lab, let me show you it!


The lab side of my classroom. There are 24 stations (48 drawers), gas, water (hot & cold), electricity. There’s a way cool fume hood (with a sink!) and a safety station (eyewash & shower). Wow, an eyewash station in the lab! How cool is that?


My desk/demo station. I’ve got water & gas as well!


Demo table from my POV. There’s even a filing drawer. I’ll have a computer on the desk, too.


The chemical storage room. Lots of storage for the chemicals. And the huge flammables & acid cabinets – wow!


The sink & safety station in the storage room. There’s also a skellington cabinet and microscope cabinet for the biology teacher.

The loose furnishings will arrive next week. I’ll be getting desks similar to what I had in the original building (but without asbestos in the table tops). Seeing my lab has gotten me excited about school starting again! 🙂

New Washer & Dryer – woohoo!

Home Depot (or rather the delivery people they contract out to) delivered my washer & dryer today – yay! Of course, there was still another Old House problem that thwarted us, but not to the point where I had to send ’em away stuff undelivered.

In the original set up, the washer was on the right and the dryer on the left. But if you look at today’s front-loading washer & dryers, the doors always open the other way around. So I figured I’d always have the doors in each others way when I used them.

Except… LG is quite a stickler for how things get installed on site. And they won’t allow any drain extension. The way the original was set up, the washer was farther from the drain than the dryer, and there was a cobbled-together drain extension for it. The guys installing the items suggested swapping the two. I was concerned about the duct for the dryer, but they said that wouldn’t be a problem (and it wasn’t).

Unfortunately, Old House Syndrome struck when removing the old drain extension. The rubber must have been glued into the pipe, so he was unable to remove it. Indeed, it broke off, leaving some of the rubber still in the drain. No matter, I’ll have my plumber fix stuff when he returns to solder my outside faucet back on (once the builders have replace the wood behind it). For now, the washer is draining into the sump.

Currently, the pair are going through their first runs. The dryer has to burn off oil for the first run and the washer has to flush out anti-mold stuff on its first run. I’ll read the instructions shortly and then do a load of laundry – woohoo! (OK, I don’t think I’ve ever said “woohoo!” about doing laundry before. Man, have I become domesticated or what?)

Hee hee – just heard the washing machine singing its “I’m done!” song. Guess I can run a load of laundry now!

Siding Happens

Been a few days since I last posted an update to my summer siding project. But I’ve got some nice photos to share today! They got the house wrapped before the weekend, which means I haven’t seen out my windows since then. Heh. They finished the soffits, then added fascia, and next trim. And today the siding arrived, so they’ve started installing it on the garage. I’ve also got a side door on my garage – that’s never happened in its lifetime. The garage door has also arrived, but they probably won’t get to that until tomorrow.

For those of you who follow me on Twitter, you got to read about my abortive attempt at getting my new washer & dryer. I called my plumber yesterday afternoon and left a message with his wife. He called this morning and came around to do the repairs needed. (The shut off valves had corroded and the dryer was directed hooked to the 220-V line.) He fixed those issues, and another one I was having with my outdoor faucet. So I called the delivery company, and they’ll attempt another delivery tomorrow. Here’s hoping it works this time!

Anyhoo, enough domestry, let’s get to some photos!


My house is covered in weather wrap!


Exterior view of house wrap. And a pre-soffit shot. (They reinforced those beams before installing the new soffits.)


The new soffits installed with holes for the vents.


I also get a new porch ceiling!


Fascia & trim on the garage!


New siding! A side door! A spot for the garage light! Woot!


Back of the garage is complete for lap siding.


New window for the garage, and its trim.

It won’t be long before I can change my “Home Sweet Home” icon! 🙂

Nekkid House

Things are progressing on my New Siding Project. No new siding yet, but all of the old stuff is off both the garage and the house!

Yesterday, Jeff and the boys got the garage squared up as best as was possible. It had been adjusted before, badly, (bits were trimmed off rather than the garage twisted back to square), but now it’s looking good. Plywood all around, and a Tyvek-style weather wrap.

Once the garage was squared and reinforced, they started removing the siding from the house. They finished the back of the house and the north side yesterday. They finished the front and south side today. Then they took off all of the window trim. Tomorrow, they wrap the house (after foaming the gaps in my windows). Hopefully they’ll start on soffits tomorrow too. 🙂

The HardiPlank siding will be arriving next week (they have enough for the trim so far), as will the garage door. The picture window & sliding back door, however, aren’t due to arrive until the last week of July – eep!

I let dad buy my lunch today as I drove him to Piqua so that I could buy a garage door opener from Sears. I also got my front light and garage light (outside) at Home Depot while we were in town. The garage door opener was on sale! Woot!

So, here are the photos from yesterday and today:


Using boards, block & tackle, and OSB, the garage was made square & more secure.


Before they put up new supports in the garage.


After they put up new supports. My ceiling seems higher! The roof no longer sags!


The front of my house sans flower box.


The back of my house sans siding.


Even the house had teal gables!


The front of the house sans siding and screen door. A nekkid house!

I feel sorry for my poor nekkid house! And there’s a chance of rain tonight – go figure! But tomorrow it’ll at least get a nice 84 lumber weather wrap, so it should be OK at that time.

Ex-siding Times!

I sure haven’t posted much this summer. Been spending a lot of the time just enjoying my time off. Visit mom often to go swimming in her association’s pool. Play WoW. Go to concerts in downtown Troy (those of you following me on Twitter have seen a few posts about that). Avoiding doing anything regarding school (which is going to be unfortunately later on when I think “Why didn’t I digitize those VHS tapes like I was going to this summer?!?!?”)

Anyhoo, one of the things I’m doing this summer (to elsaf‘s potential delight, I suspect) is residing my house and garage. I decided that I wanted to use HardiePlank for the job. Originally, wanted the main house in HardieShingle and the gables in HardiePlank, but that proved to be very expensive. So I flipped ’em around. Going to get HardiePlank lap siding for the main house and the straight edge shingles for the gables.

Six years ago, I had the house painted. I had hoped I could go at least 10 years before painting again. But that was not to be. The south wall is by far the worst of the bunch. But it’s more than painting that needs doing. The cedar shingles are dying. Several are cracked. And some are falling off. So I decided to reside the house, and chose the HardiePlank product.

I almost went with Home Depot doing the job (almost typed Office Depot – heh), even so far as having a contract signed, when I found out there were other contractors who could do the job for less. (Thanks to Mike the Builder who put me in touch with the folks. Mike’s the one who built mom & dad’s house. He’s a great guy and has a ton of stories, all of which are entertaining.)

They began the job today. They’re working on the garage now. And one of the things Jeff has promised to do is square up the garage (which either was built crooked originally, or has gotten askew over the years).

Heh heh – just had to pause in my writing since Jeff and the boys needed a length of chain to help them pull in the two sides of the garage and asked if there was anyone in town I could borrow some from. My first thought was to my cousins. Bill wasn’t in, but Mick was, and he happened to have a length of chain the right size. Since he’s just two blocks away (and I mean P Hill blocks, not proper city blocks) I walked. While carting the box home, one of my co-workers spied me and offered me a drive home. God, I love my town. 😉

Anyhoo, I know you’re all chomping at the bit to see some photos of the before and during, so here goes.


The back of the garage was painted badly back in 2004, apparently.


A close up shows the cracking paint. (This isn’t even the south wall!)


A view of the front for comparison.


The inside of the garage. Notice that the walls are the shingles!


The removal of old siding begins. And a light shines through it!


Who knew the original color of the house & garage was… teal??!? (Once I mentioned it to mom, she remembered.)


The skeleton of my garage!

I’ll try to stay on top of this project in the journal. I know that Elsa, at least, will be interested to see the progress. 🙂

Where I Live Day 2010

has opened up once again and so I decided to post some photos for Where I Live Day. Below is what I submitted to the group.

Small towns don’t change much over a short span of time, but my own hometown has had a major change this summer. If you revisit my August 2007 post, you can see a nice photo of my school and current employer. But since that photo was taken, our school district has received a grant from the Ohio School Facilities Commission to have 66% of a new school paid for (the rest coming from our wonderful township taxpayers, myself included).

The original building was completed in 1923. A gymnasium and cafeteria were added in 1969 (and that’s when my lab was redesigned and furnished). And then in 1999, a new addition with second (larger) gymnasium, office space, and class rooms was added. We started school early this past year and were out by May 7th. The auction was May 8th, and the old building sealed off on May 10th. This summer, the original ’23 building and ’69 additions were demolished. They will become the parking lot for the new building, which was built during the school year and is nearly complete.

So the town looks a bit different. Instead of this, you now see this:


The empty place where the original school once stood.

To the side of the ’99 addition is the new building. Where the ’99 addition connected to the ’69 addition, they’re sealing it off and making it look nice. They’re also connecting it to the new building so students won’t have to go outside to change classes. The new building is a single story, which makes a change from the 3-story building we had originally. Although I’m sad to see the original building go, I’m excited about the new building. And I get a new lab! Woohoo!


The new building in progress.


My room in the new building is in the center of this photo. The two floor to ceiling windows are on either side of the room (a little Bobcat is in front of one of these windows). The big double window is for our chemical storage room. And the room on the end, beside the ’99 addition, will be biology/freshman science. (I teach chemistry and physics.)

If you want to see interior photos of the school, our superintendent has been taking many photos since the start of the project, and I’ve been putting them up on the school website. Check out the New Building Updates page if you want to see more.

Pretty much the rest of the town looks the same as my earlier entries, so I decided last week to get some photos from a nature preserve which is close to my town. Alas, you can’t get there by walking (and expect to get home in a timely fashion), but it’s a short drive (on Horseshoe Bend Road, which is aptly named!) Brukner Nature Center is a privately owned nature preserve which has a number of walking paths in the woods and some meadowland as well. A great place to take an afternoon walk on a slightly-cooler-than-today-was day.


A path!


A bridge!


Trees!


A squirrel!


A meadow!


Orange flowers!


Purple flower! (And insect.)

Maybe next time opens up again, I’ll redo the tour of the town to see what else has changed over time. (Or maybe I’ll do the neighboring “Big City,” where my parents moved to this last November. OK, elsaf & judiang, you two can stop laughing about the “big city.”)

B-WISER 2010 goes by FAST!

Hard to believe that camp is almost over. We had our last day of classes today. I think version 0.99B of the Energy Course was an improvement upon last year’s version 0.99A. But it’s still in Beta.

On Tuesday, we had teacher’s night out, which was, as usual, a blast. The six of us loaded into Dee’s van at 4pm and headed to Toyrifix, the cool toy store outside of Wooster. They had a number of new items which I wound up buying. Even found a small gift to give dad as part of his birthday gift.

After the toy store, we went to Cape Cod Red Slobster for supper. Carolyn ordered appetizers for us, and several of us had drinks. I had a mango daiquiri which was very yummy. (I didn’t used to like daiquiris, so maybe my tastes are changing – or maybe I only like mango ones). The appetizers were stuffed mushrooms (which I didn’t have), fried clams, and scallops wrapped in bacon. Yummy. For my main course, I opted for coconut shrimp and crab legs. We were all stuffed when we shuffled back to the van and on to the movie theater.

The theater had a number of movies (and it was $5 night), but we wound up picking Killers, a movie I knew nothing about. It started a bit later than the others, so we had some time to visit the craft store next to the theater. The store is Pat Cattan’s and it reminded me a bit of Hobby Lobby. I found some sodium polyacrylate “pearls” that they were selling which were much larger than any I’ve seen before, so I bought a box.

Back to the theater, we watched the movie and really enjoyed ourselves. Romance, violence, humor, pretty people and Tom Selleck made for quite a fun evening. We were still chuckling about the movie when Dee got us back to the dorm.

So anyhoo, about that key piece of equipment which I realized I hadn’t packed (back in April) – turned out I also needed it for the second lab! Thanks to Mary, our liaison extraordinaire, I got some digital voltmeters which I could hook to the solar panels and we were able to do that lab. And the girls really liked the solar powered cars we got them.

The week finally cooled off today, so hopefully tonight will be an easier night to sleep. Right now the girls are outside doing their talent show, while a few of us are inside listening from inside (where there are no mosquitoes). Tomorrow we have exemplars (female scientists) who will talk to the girls, then the final ceremony (and I’m not doing the slide show – yay!). And then I leave my peeps here *sniff* but get to go home to my kitties *yay*.

B-WISER 2010

If it’s Father’s Day, then I must be at B-WISER! (Happy Father’s Day to those of you who are fathers!)

I got up early this morning and was on the road to Wooster by 8:15am. Arrived at the dorm around 11:30am and immediately spied Ann, the nurse. The two of us headed to Applebee’s to meet up with Joyce & Dee, who were saving spaces for us. We had lunch, then returned to campus where I dropped Ann off at the dorm & moved on to Severance, the chemistry building. Once Mary, who’s our Wooster liaison and does all of the important stuff like get the money & register the girls, and looks after us teachers, had arrived and let us in, we had our safety lesson (I passed the quiz!) and unloaded.

While Dee and I were setting up for tomorrow’s labs, I realized that I had forgotten a key piece of equipment – the voltage probes for the LabQuests! So tomorrow’s lab will be a lot more qualitative and analog. Thank goodness I brought a galvanometer along to show induction! I think (I hope) it’s the only thing I’ve forgotten.

We returned to the dorm, then headed off to Walmart along with our roomies, Carolyn and Joyce. I picked up some index cards for the radiation lab later this week. Carolyn bought a knock out rose for our room for the week. (She’d already bought 2 desert roses at her first Walmart trip of the day.)

The girls had almost all arrived by the time we were back, so soon we were sitting in the very hot lobby waiting for the time where we introduce ourselves. The girls had time to learn about their groupmates, make up a poster, then create a sketch, song, or cheer for displaying to the rest of us. We judged the, picked, group 4, then headed for supper.

Our dorm this year is Holden hall, so we’re right next to Lowry, where the dining hall is. Only Monday & Thursday we’ll be dining in Kittredge, which is closer to our old dorm than this one. Go figure!

After supper, we went to the football field to wait on Gary Broadbent, the boomerang guy. He was late (as usual), and when called, was surprised to discover he was supposed to be here! (He’s a great guy, but not the best about appointments, apparently.) We returned to the dorms, where Carolyn & I went to Walmart again – I had forgotten a fan, she needed a few more supplies. Ah well!

Gary arrived an hour later than intended, but we saw his show and it was entertaining as always. Then we teachers got snacks ready – ice cream sundaes. The alumni girls were done first, then the boomerang babes showed up later. The ice cream choices were vanilla and cinnamon… Not my first pick, but many of the girls enjoyed it. Toppings were choc, strawberry, and caramel.

Carolyn & I are back in the dorm. The fan is a godsend. Gotta work on a presentation for Energy tomorrow. And bed. 🙂